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Lucumo · Mar 13, 2015

Kinthalis said:
Dota 2 is a multiplayer only game (aside form bot matches). YOU NEED to be up to date at all times in roder to play with others.

Bottom line: I'm glad the world doesn't work the way you think it should. It would be bad for PC gaming and PC for gamers.

But more power to you. So long as you aren't an ass hat pirate, enjoy games how you want to enjoy them.

That's why I wrote "another thing". Patching or whatever this software did (it doesn't even notify you) shouldn't happen during a game.

On the other hand. For people like me, who want to have control over the things they do or play, it's a nightmare. From my point of view, it's simply stupid to let companies take control away from you, only because you are lazy. Just wait for the future. Too lazy to buy new food and such? Let a company screen your fridge, what you eat/your eating behavior and let them stock the food up again with recommendations on what to try next. Something like this will happen and many people won't care.

It's a shame though, that many games aren't available in any other way. I really want to play Sunless Sea but I have no choice in the distribution method. I asked the developer whether they will put out a physical disc or a physical collectors edition eventually, but while the person was interested, there were no concrete plans. It's unfortunate because I wouldn't mind paying full price or more.

Kinthalis · Mar 13, 2015

Lucumo said:
That's why I wrote "another thing". Patching or whatever this software did (it doesn't even notify you) shouldn't happen during a game.

On the other hand. For people like me, who want to have control over the things they do or play, it's a nightmare. From my point of view, it's simply stupid to let companies take control away from you, only because you are lazy. Just wait for the future. Too lazy to buy new food and such? Let a company screen your fridge, what you eat/your eating behavior and let them stock the food up again with recommendations on what to try next. Something like this will happen and many people won't care.

It's a shame though, that many games aren't available in any other way. I really want to play Sunless Sea but I have no choice in the distribution method. I asked the developer whether they will put out a physical disc or a physical collectors edition eventually, but while the person was interested, there were no concrete plans. It's unfortunate because I wouldn't mind paying full price or more.

It's not about being lazy. It's about my time being worth more. I'm not 12 anymore. I don't have time to deal with websites littered with pop up ads to find updates on all my games, or even if a new update has been released.

Same goes with control over my gaming. I care about control over the way my game looks and runs. I care about control over what input device I use in my games. I don't care how my game is updated, so long as it is updated.

Aureon · Mar 13, 2015

Klossen said:
I hope this doesn't mean that updating a game becomes crucial in making the game playable. A game should be finished and done by release. The following updates shouldn't be neccessary for most people. Just tweaks, fine tuning and bug squashing. I'm generally very much the idea of turning a product into a service.

With that said, well done Paradox. The greatest weapon against piracy is making products worth paying for. The happy buyer does not turn to piracy. And the pirate can be converted into a happy buyer over time.

The trick is that if an update is crucial to gameplay, pirates will also pirate that.

But smallish things, nobody will put in the effort.

collige · Mar 13, 2015

Lucumo said:
That's why I wrote "another thing". Patching or whatever this software did (it doesn't even notify you) shouldn't happen during a game.

Patching doesn't happen during a game unless you explicitly allow it. Every game you install on Steam has background downloads disabled by default.

Ikuu · Mar 13, 2015

Who didn't love download patches from third party sites that charged you for priority downloads or to get full speed.

Denton · Mar 13, 2015

Good on Paradox, they know whats up much like Valve and CDP.
Those screenshots though. City builders are not my thing, but. Those screenshots.

Krakn3Dfx · Mar 13, 2015

Steam Workshop support, a reasonable base price, and a quality product. Yeah, given the 46k+ playing this on Steam right now, I'd say they're making the right moves.

Ryne · Mar 13, 2015

Steam/other download management sites makes it entirely too easy for me to not pirate games.

Looking for updates, downloading patches, wondering if the game even works, playing online... don't have to worry when it is legal.

Almighty · Mar 13, 2015

I agree with him. Automatic patching is a godsend in my book and I can't even imagine going back to the old days. It also killed piracy for me because trying to pirate updates was even more of a pain and if its for a game like CK2 that is being updated years after its released and is pretty niche sometimes its impossible.

Lucumo · Mar 13, 2015

Kinthalis said:
It's not about being lazy. It's about my time being worth more. I'm not 12 anymore. I don't have time to deal with websites littered with pop up ads to find updates on all my games, or even if a new update has been released.

Dunno, I don't have the time either. But with not much time, I don't play much and thus, checking once a week for updates, sacrificing like 3-4 minutes (more if there is one available) is fine. Patches aren't released that often (maybe it's different with Steam), so you don't really lose much.

collige said:
Patching doesn't happen during a game unless you explicitly allow it. Every game you install on Steam has background downloads disabled by default.

As I said, no idea what it was. I disabled everything but it definitely came from Steam. I had to reset my internet connection to actually get rid of it (before it started later again during another game).

Elixist · Mar 13, 2015

Ikuu said:
Who didn't love download patches from third party sites that charged you for priority downloads or to get full speed.

yaaa, i felt like this reading those posts

Grief.exe · Mar 13, 2015

~10% piracy rate seems extremely low.

NIN90 · Mar 13, 2015

huh there's a defense force for manual patch downloads off sites like gamershell

learn something new every day

also this:

NumberThree · Mar 13, 2015

Lucumo said:
I prefer the former because I actually want to control what I download. That's another thing that bothered me with Steam. When I wanted to look whether DotA 2 was a worthy successor, Steam always started downloading something while I was in the game, thus making me unable to play the game..

Yeah, that's literally never happened for me. For a long time Steam would never download anything when playing another game, these days you can set it to do whatever you want. Always download, never download, game-specific exceptions etc.

Lucumo · Mar 13, 2015

NIN90 said:
huh there's a defense force for manual patch downloads off sites like gamershell

learn something new every day

No, we slided into this topic while talking about how Steam as a service is DRM and how Europa Universalis 4 requires such DRM to play Ironman mode.

NumberThree said:
Yeah, that's literally never happened for me. For a long time Steam would never download anything when playing another game, these days you can set it to do whatever you want. Always download, never download, game-specific exceptions etc.

Well, no idea. It was about a year ago.

OnionPowder · Mar 13, 2015

Grief.exe said:
~10% piracy rate seems extremely low.

I expect it to be 99% the way publishers normally talk about piracy rates

TimeEffect · Mar 13, 2015

Presumably pirates also want to support hard working devs like Colossal too, so those that would pirate may just purchase it. Especially since the price value is insane

Almighty · Mar 13, 2015

Lucumo said:
No, we slided into this topic while talking about how Steam as a service is DRM and how Europa Universalis 4 requires such DRM to play Ironman mode.

A quick test tells me that none of the DLC works without Steam either.

Kinthalis · Mar 13, 2015

TimeEffect said:
Presumably pirates also want to support hard working devs like Colossal too, so those that would pirate may just purchase it. Especially since the price value is insane

Ha!

So naive and pure, like a newly born kitten, you are

BennyBlanco · Mar 13, 2015

Lucumo said:
Too lazy to buy new food and such? Let a company screen your fridge, what you eat/your eating behavior and let them stock the food up again with recommendations on what to try next.

where do i sign up?

yiepekaiyei · Mar 13, 2015

defense force for manual patches and general hipsterism... Glad for your ignore list, neogaf!

Nzyme32 · Mar 13, 2015

JoeTheBlow said:
No, I agree with him, convenience goes a long way.
Having Steam tell me I can't play a game till the latest patch has downloaded isn't that convenient though, they should work like android/apple updates.

I've always thought this is to do with preventing fragmentation. Regardless, when I find the need to avoid an update, I simply use offline mode

Accoun · Mar 13, 2015

Ikuu said:
Who didn't love download patches from third party sites that charged you for priority downloads or to get full speed.

I downloaded my patches from the local publishers' sites back in the day. Don't remember any stuff like awful speed throttling or annoying popups, everything was quick and easy. Wouldn't international publishers also have them on their websites?

(at least when I started to have internet connection in the 00s, not sure how it was earlier online)

patapuf · Mar 13, 2015

JoeTheBlow said:
He says that like constant patching is a good thing. Finish your damn games.

you don't play much games that are supposed to last years do you?

Accoun said:
I downloaded my patches from the local publishers' sites back in the day. Don't remember any stuff like awful speed throttling or annoying popups, everything was quick and easy. Wouldn't international publishers also have them on their websites?

(at least when I started to have internet connection in the 00s, not sure how it was earlier online)

Some publisher sites simply linked back to those third party sites. Fileplanet was the biggest one Iirc. That started around the time patches started to become >300 MB in size.

KR_remix · Mar 13, 2015

Ikuu said:
Who didn't love download patches from third party sites that charged you for priority downloads or to get full speed.

Having to go through a queue or paying to get into the fast queue/skip ahead in line, gross.

edit: demos and betas hosted exclusively on these sites was also irritating.

dr_rus · Mar 14, 2015

JaseC said:
Well, if you're willing to pay, you could have someone gift you a ROW (rest-of-world) version of an Ubi game in exchange for, say, PayPal Bucks or a sufficient amount of TF2 keys.

No I can't. Cross region trading and gifting has been locked down since a couple of months ago on most titles. If we take the FC4 example here's the sub which is selling in the US - https://steamdb.info/sub/54143/ - note that it can't be gifted to anyone outside of the Americas region.

This is really stupid as it's a compete lunacy to assume that a lot of people would try to resell more expensive US version in other regions where the same game cost 30-50% less on the store itself.

What's even more idiotic is that usually I purchase normal versions cheaper eventually than they sell the region restricted ones in the Steam store. So they not only sell restricted versions but they're actually ask MORE MONEY for them.

AC Rogue is another fresh example of this - it only has Russian in Russian Steam store and you can't get around this in any way other than buying a region free Uplay key from some shady website.

Steam is dying for me because of this publishers enforced crap and no one seem to care.

heringer · Mar 14, 2015

I've learned today that if you like convenience, you are lazy!

Foffy · Mar 14, 2015

I think this is what Bohemia Interactive did with ArmA III. It doesn't have their crazy impressive DRM, but the game gets updates every weekday on the dev branch, so unless one bought it, one is constantly missing changes and tweaks.

BibiMaghoo · Mar 14, 2015

Every paid for game is a superior experience than a pirated one. This is a default scenario, rather than something they have to put work into doing. A pirated game, aside from the fuckery of installing and presumably cracking it, will have features disabled or missing.

KojiKnight · Mar 14, 2015

sense said:
I don't know about no one pirating but it will cut down some piracy. imo majority of people pirate games because they can't afford it or are just cheap and want them for free

Like theft from stores, a majority of pirates can afford what they are stealing... It's about ease and boredom. It's also been shown that many people who pirate games never go on to play them or only do so for a very short time... meaning they likely weren't ever to purchase it in the first place for playing. It's about collecting to those.

Not a justification by any means, but it is what it is.

BibiMaghoo said:
Every paid for game is a superior experience than a pirated one. This is a default scenario, rather than something they have to put work into doing. A pirated game, aside from the fuckery of installing and presumably cracking it, will have features disabled or missing.

Except many times this is not true... See Assassin's Creed 2 when it first released on PC... Owners had the inferior experience with save issues and sometimes not even able to play their game offline due to extreme DRM. Pirates on the other hand did not have these issues.

Azih · Mar 14, 2015

JoeTheBlow said:
He says that like constant patching is a good thing. Finish your damn games.

Many games are a service now.

Cizeta-Moroder · Mar 14, 2015

Lucumo said:
I prefer the former because I actually want to control what I download. That's another thing that bothered me with Steam. When I wanted to look whether DotA 2 was a worthy successor, Steam always started downloading something while I was in the game, thus making me unable to play the game. I deactivated all sorts of things but it still did so.
And being 100% dependent on a service is never a good thing. Just look at when Steam is down and everyone starts whining in the forums.

This is my issue with Steam. Disabling auto-updates isn't possbile, so I have to stay constantly vigilant for malicious updates and launch those games in offline mode from that point on.

xenist · Mar 14, 2015

BibiMaghoo said:
Every paid for game is a superior experience than a pirated one. This is a default scenario, rather than something they have to put work into doing. A pirated game, aside from the fuckery of installing and presumably cracking it, will have features disabled or missing.

This is not true. If anything pirated games often come with extra shit.

KojiKnight · Mar 14, 2015

Cizeta-Moroder said:
This is my issue with Steam. Disabling auto-updates isn't possbile, so I have to stay constantly vigilant for malicious updates and launch those games in offline mode from that point on.

err....

NIN90 said:
huh there's a defense force for manual patch downloads off sites like gamershell

learn something new every day

also this:

Zia · Mar 14, 2015

Lucumo said:
I prefer the former because I actually want to control what I download. That's another thing that bothered me with Steam. When I wanted to look whether DotA 2 was a worthy successor, Steam always started downloading something while I was in the game, thus making me unable to play the game. I deactivated all sorts of things but it still did so.

While I wish that there was a fix for this, this only happens when Workshop data downloads and you already have something queued. Also, it takes less than 5 seconds to tab out, pause the download and tab back in.

Klossen · Mar 14, 2015

Foffy said:
I think this is what Bohemia Interactive did with ArmA III. It doesn't have their crazy impressive DRM, but the game gets updates every weekday on the dev branch, so unless one bought it, one is constantly missing changes and tweaks.

There is no point in pirating Arma 3 since Arma 3 is primarily an online game intended for modding. With that said, I do feel like BI aren't a good example of this. Arma 3 remains poorly optimized and BI is selling content that should've been in base game as DLC.

Cizeta-Moroder · Mar 14, 2015

KojiKnight said:
err....

That doesn't disable updating, merely defers it until launch. Going offline is the only way to play an out-of-date game. Which sucks.

fantomena · Mar 14, 2015

I remember the days I had to go to all thsoe shady third party sites when I had to download a shitload of Crysis updates and most of them requried me to either wait 1 min to start downloading or I had to pay for a month membership to download right away and get maximum dowload speed.

BibiMaghoo · Mar 14, 2015

KojiKnight said:
Except many times this is not true... See Assassin's Creed 2 when it first released on PC... Owners had the inferior experience with save issues and sometimes not even able to play their game offline due to extreme DRM. Pirates on the other hand did not have these issues.

xenist said:
This is not true. If anything pirated games often come with extra shit.

There are occasions it's not true, but they are certainly not the norm. Any game - which accounts for the majority - with a multiplayer component will be inferior. The very act of having to crack it makes it inferior. Pirate games often come with extra stuff? Not true at all in my opinion, and I'd like some example of this if you have some. The vast majority will have a missing components, features the do not work and more. The only games mostly safe from this are single player offline only games. These may have all the DLC in them or they may not. And they may still have anti piracy features that alter the game.

The most pirated games of all generally contain a multiplayer component which is rendered mostly or completely useless with a pirated copy. I stand by paid for games being a better experience by default.

Phrozenflame500 · Mar 14, 2015

100% agree. Paradox does a fantastic job deterring piracy just by doing regular maintenance on their games from bug fixes to balance changes to sometimes even free content.

Having to keep up to date on a pirated copy via downloading changes from unofficial sources (if they exist) every patch sounds like a pain in the ass compared to it auto-downloading via Steam or your digital distributor of choice.

Haunted · Mar 14, 2015

Smart man. You'd think some of the suits at bigger publishers would take notice of a successful PC-focused developer and publisher and apply this to their own games.

Also love the screenshots in the OP.

SneakyStephan · Mar 14, 2015

Kinthalis said:
Dota 2 is a multiplayer only game (aside form bot matches). YOU NEED to be up to date at all times in roder to play with others.

Bottom line: I'm glad the world doesn't work the way you think it should. It would be bad for PC gaming and PC for gamers.

But more power to you. So long as you aren't an ass hat pirate, enjoy games how you want to enjoy them.

I played cs 1.5 for a long time after the 1.6 update
Forcing people to patch their games can be really annoying in multiplayer games imo

On topic:
Their point is that you don't fight piracy by pissing off your paying customers (with drm, always online, forced sign ins and what have you)

Their idea is making you want to buy the game and be able to feel good about it.

BibiMaghoo said:
Every paid for game is a superior experience than a pirated one. This is a default scenario, rather than something they have to put work into doing. A pirated game, aside from the fuckery of installing and presumably cracking it, will have features disabled or missing.

Steam is one of the few services that makes it easier and more convenient to pay than to pirate (which is why it's successful)

Look at a game like driver san francisco.
I was getting terrible stutter due to their always online drm... the game was waiting for a ping from the server, but their drm servers were overloaded so the ping came with a delay,and the game was stalling till it came.
Anyone who pirated the game didn't have to deal with any of that shit. Their game just worked.

Pirated games have all the DLC as well as all the pre order bonusses (even stuff like gamestop specific ones etc) you can't even get all of them in many games by buying it legit (again like ubisoft shit where you need a flowchart to describe what dlc you get with which version bought at which store)

Microtransactions for convenience (like having to buy money in forza 5 to then buy the overpriced cars ingame that you already paid for with real money as they were DLC)
Anyone who pirated forza 5 had all the DLC and all the credits they could want. By far the better experience especially before they patched it to be less of a 'fuck you give me money' shitgrind.

There is no fuckery and cracking with piracy... it's still way more convenient than buying games at retail or dealing with uplay/rockstar social club etc
You'll download the game at 5-10 MB/second (MB, not Mb) and you get an installer that cracks it for you or at most you move a dll and replacement .exe in the installation folder (which takes a lot less long than singing up for an account or dealing with other forms of DRM)
Again this is where steam is one of the few things that are more convenient than piracy, which makes it more appealing to buy a game.

This is why the paradox guy says the things he says.
You can only compete with piracy if you make things equally convenient (or better) and offer good post launch support and content and other things that will make people want to buy your game (as opposed to try and fail to force them to buy your game while pissing off the people who are giving you money)

baterism · Mar 14, 2015

He is correct.

Playing pirated copies? Puh lease... who will count my achievements then.
Steam being so widely accepted by PC communities who love options more than breakfast must have a reason. Sakurai seems agree.

JaseC · Mar 14, 2015

dr_rus said:
No I can't. Cross region trading and gifting has been locked down since a couple of months ago on most titles.

You misunderstand. Valve didn't lock down cross-region trading entirely, just from certain territories, namely Asia, Central/South America, Eastern Europe, South-east Asia, the Middle East, China, India, South Africa and Turkey (click the links for specific countries) -- i.e. regions wherein games are notably cheaper by default. People outside of the following countries:

traderegions

asia/countries/hk: 1446595200
asia/countries/tw: 1446595200
csa/countries/ar: 1
csa/countries/bo: 1
csa/countries/br: 1
csa/countries/bs: 1
csa/countries/bz: 1
csa/countries/cl: 1
csa/countries/co: 1
csa/countries/cr: 1
csa/countries/ec: 1
csa/countries/gt: 1
csa/countries/gy: 1
csa/countries/hn: 1
csa/countries/mx: 1
csa/countries/ni: 1
csa/countries/pa: 1
csa/countries/pe: 1
csa/countries/py: 1
csa/countries/sr: 1
csa/countries/sv: 1
csa/countries/uy: 1
csa/countries/ve: 1
cyn/countries/cn: 1446595200
inr/countries/in: 1446595200
mide/countries/ae: 1447200000
mide/countries/sa: 1447200000
rcis/countries/am: 1
rcis/countries/az: 1
rcis/countries/by: 1
rcis/countries/ge: 1
rcis/countries/kg: 1
rcis/countries/kz: 1
rcis/countries/md: 1
rcis/countries/ru: 1
rcis/countries/tj: 1
rcis/countries/tm: 1
rcis/countries/ua: 1
rcis/countries/uz: 1
sea/countries/id: 1
sea/countries/my: 1
sea/countries/ph: 1
sea/countries/sg: 1
sea/countries/th: 1
sea/countries/vn: 1445382000
try/countries/tr: 1
zar/countries/za: 1447200000

...are not affected and thus can still send you games, even though those you send to people outside of the "RCIS" countries listed above will be region-locked (both at the activation level and the runtime level as of a few days ago). In short: You can't send a region-free game to, say, a US user, but a US user can still send you a region-free game. Keep this in mind the next time there's an Ubi game you want.

Late edit: Updated to be accurate as at 17/08/2016.

BibiMaghoo · Mar 14, 2015

SneakyStephan said:
Steam is one of the few services that makes it easier and more convenient to pay than to pirate (which is why it's successful)

Look at a game like driver san francisco.
I was getting terrible stutter due to their always online drm... the game was waiting for a ping from the server, but their drm servers were overloaded so the ping came with a delay,and the game was stalling till it came.
Anyone who pirated the game didn't have to deal with any of that shit. Their game just worked.

Pirated games have all the DLC as well as all the pre order bonusses (even stuff like gamestop specific ones etc) you can't even get all of them in many games by buying it legit (again like ubisoft shit where you need a flowchart to describe what dlc you get with which version bought at which store)

Microtransactions for convenience (like having to buy money in forza 5 to then buy the overpriced cars ingame that you already paid for with real money as they were DLC)
Anyone who pirated forza 5 had all the DLC and all the credits they could want. By far the better experience especially before they patched it to be less of a 'fuck you give me money' shitgrind.

There is no fuckery and cracking with piracy... it's still way more convenient than buying games at retail or dealing with uplay/rockstar social club etc
You'll download the game at 5-10 MB/second (MB, not Mb) and you get an installer that cracks it for you or at most you move a dll and replacement .exe in the installation folder (which takes a lot less long than singing up for an account or dealing with other forms of DRM)
Again this is where steam is one of the few things that are more convenient than piracy, which makes it more appealing to buy a game.

This is why the paradox guy says the things he says.
You can only compete with piracy if you make things equally convenient (or better) and offer good post launch support and content and other things that will make people want to buy your game (as opposed to try and fail to force them to buy your game while pissing off the people who are giving you money)

Sure, but in these examples - which are relatively few - it is because of broken DRM, mainly from one particular party. In these cases of course pirates don't have an issue, but they are 100% locked out of online play and connected features, and that is a huge hit. COD, Starcraft and BF are some of the most pirated games of all time, and yet are half useless, the better half generally speaking. You can download a game like Skyrim and yes, you can get the actual game in full after wading through comment to check it's legit and crack it or run the crack with it, but that isn't a better experience, it's a worse one for free.

Having to do those things is fuckery. If I have to wade through comments to check something is legit, virus check it, move files and / or run a crack, that is not easier than buying the game at all. It is easy in itself, but far more inconvenient. That's without searching for a copy that is the most updated, or has the most DLC or whatever. It is not comparable.

I totally agree that the best approach is to not fuck over your customers to try and stop pirates, but I fail to see how pirating games can ever match the experience of a bought one, with the exception of DRM issues, which are not the norm at all unless you are Ubisoft.

Wiktor · Mar 14, 2015

I love automatic updates. But patches should always be avaible for manual download and install too.

sssstententen · Mar 14, 2015

Even just PR statements like this make me want to support that company more through buying their games.

The Europa games are some of the craziest in-depth strategy games out there, and they put a shitton of effort into them, even if they're not for everyone.

I hope more small time companies who just get really good at doing what they're good at and fulfilling their niche can find continued success like Paradox.

Rentahamster · Mar 15, 2015

Lucumo said:
Just wait for the future. Too lazy to buy new food and such? Let a company screen your fridge, what you eat/your eating behavior and let them stock the food up again with recommendations on what to try next. Something like this will happen and many people won't care.

Hell yeah I'd sign up for that. It would free up my time shopping for groceries and allow me to dedicate more time to work or leisure.

SparkTR · Mar 15, 2015

This was Valve's solution to piracy in like 2008, when everyone was going crazy about piracy effects and whatnot. It's no coincidence that developers are finding the most success on the platform using this mindset, Valve has about a million different metrics and data samples to get to their conclusions, when they say this is how you curb piracy then that's how you curb piracy.

Sober · Mar 15, 2015

Steam is perfectly fine and actually preferred 98% of the time, because it auto-updates and keeps everything in place and it's DRM, sure, but it's fairly unintrusive compared to all the crap PC gamers had to put up with for the last decade or so before Steam. (remember Starforce anyone?)

The only people who are truly disillusioned with or outright hate Steam are the really grognard old guard of PC gamers. They only come out to complain when the next installment of a 4X/RTS/city builder/flight sim come out anyway. I don't even think the CRPG crowd is that grognard-y anymore.

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